


ab luce ad ignis.

by Sunie



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Domestic Fluff, Gen, M/M, Sastiel Big Bang 2016, Trans Sam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-28
Updated: 2016-12-28
Packaged: 2018-09-13 00:41:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9097927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sunie/pseuds/Sunie
Summary: Because that’s how Castiel is looking at him right now, like he’s something worth admiring, and Sam doesn’t know what to do or how to handle it.

  How Dean could handle it, he’ll never know.
 A story in five parts. Season 9 AU.





	1. prologus.

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated to the light of my life. ♡
> 
> Special thanks to Grungor for editing this and giving me pointers on how best to approach my first ever Big Bang ship fic.
> 
> [Art](http://stanfordbaby.tumblr.com/post/155091419995/ab-luce-ad-ignis-because-thats-how-castiel-is%22) credit goes to [stanfordbaby](http://stanfordbaby.tumblr.com) on tumblr. Thank you for being such a lovely partner.
> 
> Finally, thanks to the organizers of the Sastiel Big Bang for giving me the motivation to complete what is my longest and most ambitious piece yet.
> 
> Please enjoy!

_Laughter shall be mingled with sorrow,_  
_And mourning taketh hold of the end of joy._  
Proverbs 14:13

-

Sam’s fist hovers over the chipped green paint of the motel door as billowing pale breaths plume forth from his lips. The motel owner had told him, between yawns, about the man checked in under the name _Clarence_ ; he’s expected to leave by sunrise tomorrow.

At this hour, the only light comes from the bent lamppost wilting over the parking lot, and it casts pallid shadows on the dips between Sam’s knuckles. Like this, his hand looks almost gaunt, skeletal, and he has to shake off the feeling of cold curling up inside his gut before he wills himself to knock, his fist rapping off the wood into what seems like minutes of silence.

The door opens, and Sam’s breath hitches—because if he didn’t know any better, he’d never believe for even a second that the scruffy man standing before him was once an angel of the Lord. Gone is the grace and stoic poise that Sam once so strongly associated with Castiel: Cas’s alarm is written clearly in the stiffness of his features and the way his shining blue eyes are blown wide. For a moment there is only confusion and wonder—“ _Sam_?”—he says, uttering Sam’s name like it’s meant to be handled gently; but then his eyes narrow, and wrinkles form dark valleys on his face as he shrinks away.

“You aren’t supposed to be here,” he says, and Sam inhales.

“I know.” He reaches out his hand, places it on the doorframe. “But please, Cas. Just hear me out.” His eyes move towards the interior of the motel past Castiel’s slumping shoulders, and Sam can see defeat entering that tired body as the once-angel shuffles aside, begrudgingly allowing Sam access.

And so carefully, Sam paces inside, feeling the carpet squish under his heavy footfalls. Once he’s in, Castiel cranes his neck out as if to monitor the surroundings, and then, presumably deeming it safe, he closes the door and locks it. Sam takes a moment to set down his things as Cas turns, his hand still on the doorknob as he regards his new guest with hesitant curiosity.

“Does Dean know you’re here?” he asks, and Sam tenses.

He knew, of course, that it was an unavoidable question. But to be asked it so soon? He forces a smile: the tight-lipped, mildly anguished kind that has all those layered meanings that he knows, in the back of his mind, that Cas isn’t going to understand. “Probably. But it doesn’t matter. This isn’t about Dean, okay?”

Castiel’s brows knit together and his head cants just slightly to the side. Sam almost scoffs at the expression. Well, in a way, it’s kind of cute, but on the other—it’s kind of scary, really, that the phrase ‘ _this isn’t about Dean_ ’ should be so bewildering.

It’s scary how important Dean is to Cas. How important Dean is to the _both_ of them. Like Dean is the sun and the whole galaxy revolves around him.

But Dean isn’t here right now, and Sam is not going to let himself—or Cas—spiral out of control. Not like this.

Sam sits down on one of the unoccupied seats as Castiel lowers himself onto the edge of the bed, playing awkwardly with the cuffs of his sleeves. Dressed like this, in the borrowed casual clothes of ordinary men, he looks so different; softer around the edges, his silhouette more delicate now than before, when his body was framed by the harsh angles of his rumpled trenchcoat.

Sam leans forward in the chair, kneading his fingers together. He never thought he’d get this far, and he isn’t sure what he expected, but it definitely wasn’t _this_. In his mind, he’d imagined Castiel the human as the same as the angel, just without the wings and the glory, but still righteous and unshakable. He was going to come and ask for his help, and together they would hunt down Gadreel and Metatron (without Dean), and once and for all Sam would prove his worth, would prove his worth to himself, to Dean, to the angel.

Now, however, he’s faced with the reality: Castiel the human is just a man, and he has a whole future ahead of him that Sam could now be yanking away.

Sam knows he’s selfish, but he just can’t help it. All he can do is pray that Castiel forgives him.

“I need your help hunting an angel.”

Castiel blinks, his head lifting. His eyes search Sam’s face for answers that aren’t there. “An angel? Why?”

Sam breathes, extravagant explanations starting in his mind, stopping before getting to his throat. He decides to cut to the point: “The angel that possessed me. Gadreel.”

“What—” Castiel flounders. “How—” He shakes his head, fingers closing into fists. His chest swells in some display of power; rage and anger wash over him like tides crashing onto the sand. But before he has the chance for wrath, Sam quells it, moves forward and speaks soft words to quiet that divine justice.

“It doesn’t matter. What’s done is done. All we can do now is go after him.”

There’s a pause; the sounds of their exhalations fill the airs between them. Sam’s hands twitch like he’s waiting for the inevitable explosion of fury.

But then Castiel gives. He deflates and looks down, uttering a, “You’re right,” before his chin lifts, his eyes earnest and bright, and out of nowhere he comes closer, comes closer and takes Sam’s hands. Sam’s throat shudders closed, inhalations caught in his lungs as Castiel continues, earnest, ever so earnest, exposing his heart like an open wound as he always does. “I’m honored you came for my help,” he says. “I don’t know if we’ll be able to do this without Dean, but I will do everything in my power to help you. I promise you that.”

Belatedly, as something airy flutters inside his gut, Sam realizes that Castiel is almost _reverent_. His eyes are wide and full of light and all of it is focused on Sam— _Sam!_ —and whether it’s out of gratitude or excitement or… whatever, he doesn’t know, but it’s an expression he’s never been able to see this close. Sure, he’s seen hints of it before, but never like this—and never for _him_.

But then it’s gone as soon as he got to glimpse it, because Castiel pulls back his hands and steps away to go to the bathroom, nodding his head curtly as if to cue the moment’s end. Sam’s hands are left empty, his tense fingers grasping at nothing. Slowly, his hands curl into fists, and he lowers them back to his sides.

It’s a good look for Cas, Sam decides. He thinks he’d like to see it again.

-

Castiel dreams of colors that he can no longer see. In his dreams, he flies, and his wings are the color of wind chimes dancing, of the edges of expanding stars. He spreads them wide and they catch the ether, extending and casting shadows as dark as the static before a storm.

Like this, he’s happy. Surrounded by the glimmers of hopeful meteors, he feels his being swell, his wavelengths amplified, and he rises. Gamma and ultraviolet waves pour down the slopes of his back and shimmer down his feathers as he draws nearer to the heavens.

Castiel looks directly at the Sun, and his eyes do not waver. All stars are beautiful, he knows, but for him, the Sun will always be the most brilliant. For it was the Sun that bathed the Earth in its light and shook the molecules that became humanity. And it is the Sun, right now, that he extends his hand towards, watching as its stellar spectra filter between his fingers onto his faces.

But Castiel flew too close to the Sun.

Golden flares to scarlet and filaments of plasma scourge his thousand wings. A shriek tears itself from his throat. Feathers shatter like glass, the skeletal bones of his wings left exposed, and he falls, tumbling and hurtling through the air like a graceless shooting star.

When he lands, he bleeds. It hurts.

His back is on the ground, and he can see nothing. All his eyes are gone—all but the ones on his faces, the ones that know only ten million colors. All around him, his feathers drift to the earth, surrounding him in a bed of his own errors.

When he sees again, angels are standing above him.

Balthazar, Anna, Uriel, Gabriel, and Raphael and Naomi and the countless faces he’d slain when he was ‘God’. Their mouths move together, a chorus of angels imploring him to repent, _repent_.

They hold him down. Naomi’s faces draw closer to his. In her hands she holds a dish, and she splashes blood onto his head. His lungs fill with water. _Castiel—I now baptize you—_

“Cas!”

Castiel snaps awake, sitting up before he even realizes he was asleep. Sweat drips down the valleys in his face, and he brings his shaking hands up to wipe some of it away. He looks at his palms and sees pale, peachy flesh blushing pink. He has only two eyes.

Slowly, he lifts his head to see Sam leaning over him like a sentinel, brows worried in concern. “Hey, are you okay? It sounded like you were choking.”

Castiel opens his mouth and then looks down again. He flexes his fingers, watches as contracting muscle manipulates bone and skin. It takes him a moment, but then he turns his gaze back to Sam again and tells him, “I dreamt.”

For a beat, Sam doesn’t seem to process the words the way Castiel meant them to be, but then an expression blooms slowly on his face, starting with the opening of his eyes and then down to his widening lips. “Oh,” says Sam, and then, “right. Because—because you didn’t dream before. Right.” He leans back and rubs his hand down his face, as if such a gesture could wipe away all his preconceptions about what it really means to pluck away an angel’s grace. When his expression forms again, it’s softer, and there’s a look in his eyes that dares to presume he knows what Castiel might be going through.

It is bold, and arrogant, but Castiel craves the sympathy anyways, because sympathy is so rare when you are the angel that made stars fall and turned wings to ash.

“You know,” Sam says carefully, “Dean and I have been struggling with nightmares for a long time. It’s all part of the job. And it sucks, and it takes getting used to, but all you can do is just remind yourself that none of it is real.”

“It wasn’t a nightmare.”

Sam stops like he’s just been struck, and gives Castiel an incredulous look. “But… but you were choking and thrashing around. How was that not a nightmare?”

Castiel can no longer bear to look at Sam. He turns away and faces the peeling wallpaper like it’ll give him the solidarity he needs to speak the things he never wanted spoken. “You said that the things that happen in nightmares aren’t real. What I saw… what I felt, all of that was real.”

“Cas…”

Castiel shakes his head, pressing his hands together. The faded patterns inscribed on the wallpaper resemble curling ivy. He imagines it must have once been beautiful. He wants to imagine he, too, was once beautiful. Now he isn’t sure what he is: awkward, human, ugly, misshapen. A freak. He forces himself to face Sam squarely. He doesn’t want to talk about this now. Or maybe not ever. “You said you would look for leads. Have you found any?” he asks.

Sam blinks. The change in topic is a challenge, and Castiel can see there are words still stirring inside the hunter’s chest, burning to be given voice.

But not today, and for Castiel, that is a blessing. Sam deflates, his shoulders settling, and he withdraws from the bed to seat himself back in the creaky chair, placing a hand on the closed chassis of his laptop. For a moment he only sits there, seemingly stewing in his own unease, before he speaks again to answer Castiel’s question and discard the topic of nightmares for a conversation that may never come. “So, uh, yeah.” He tucks a stray strand of hair behind his ear. “There, uh… there are some reports of mass stabbings in an area pretty far out from here. I’m thinking angel-on-angel violence. Doesn’t exactly mean Gadreel will be there, but… it’s all I’ve got for now.”

Castiel nods, and pushes himself up to lean against the headboard. His forehead is slick with sweat, and he lifts a hand to wipe some of it away from his brow. “The factions are still at war. That, or Metatron is using… coercive methods to recruit angels to his cause.”

Sam’s brows rise. “Does killing count as coercion now?”

“What else do angels have left to lose?” Castiel slips out of bed and stands up. To stand on feet that are now his own, and not ones that he has borrowed, is a strange feeling. He is ever more aware of the balance of his body and of the way the cheap carpet sinks just a pinch from his weight. Sam opens his mouth to speak again, but Castiel makes his way quickly into the bathroom, and shuts the door. For a few breaths, he just stands there, his back against the wood, and he feels the way his chest expands and contracts. If he were still an angel, he’d be able to hear every move Sam makes outside, but he is not an angel anymore, and he can barely hear anything at all aside from the sound of his own respiration in his ears.

If he were still an angel, he’d be able to see all the colors. If he were still an angel, he’d be able to see Sam’s soul again, brilliant and golden, rays of light extending like petals opening. If he were still an angel, he wouldn’t have to sleep, where he’s forced to endure the past again and again and where his emotions—his emotions, so potent, so _human_ —are manifest. If he were still an angel…

He turns the shower faucet on and yanks up the diverter on the tub spout. Water shoots from the showerhead. The motel room came cheap, so the water pressure isn’t ideal, but Castiel has learned to be grateful for even small graces. He strips off his clothing and then steps into the tub. He likes the water hot. He likes to imagine it burning away his impurities, cleansing his flesh of worldly sin, of the dirt and grime of human life.

Castiel scrubs hard, until his skin flushes red.


	2. introitus.

_I am the man that hath seen affliction_   
_By the rod of His wrath._   
_He hath led me and caused me to walk in darkness and not in light._   
_Surely against me He turneth His hand again and again all the day._   
Lamentations 3:1-3

-

“So where exactly are we headed right now?”

Sam angles his head so that he can just barely see Castiel out of the corner of his eye. The other man currently has his eyes glued to the window, presumably watching the flat orange terrain pass by. Not the most interesting sight, Sam thinks, but he supposes it must be better than looking at his own hands.

“It’s, uh, it’s actually out in the wilderness,” Sam replies, his eyes flitting back onto the empty stretch of grey road. “The closest place I could find to where the bodies are being found was some log cabin, so I booked it. It’s probably better if we stay away from civilization, anyways.”

“Are we anticipating a long stay?”

Sam shrugs. “I don’t know how long it’ll be until the next clash. Seems that right now, it’s almost like they’re… fighting over the area, or something. So there must be something of interest there.”

“That, or they’re being deliberately summoned to the area.”

“Is it possible to summon angels like that?”

“I’m not sure. But I wouldn’t rule it out. If Metatron is recruiting, then the best way for him to do it will be to draw all the lost angels to him.”

Sam nods. They spend another mile or so quietly: Castiel watching the landscape, Sam with his eyes on the horizon. He idly raps his fingers on the driving wheel before he speaks again, eager to tear away the heavy weight of silence filling up the car. “What are you gonna do, after we catch Gadreel and stop Metatron?”

Castiel glances at Sam, his face scrunched in thought. “I don’t know,” he says, and looks away. “I could do… things that humans do.”

“Things that humans do? You mean…”

“Living a normal life. Having a job, a family, a house… I’m human, now—I should do what humans do, right?”

“Yeah, but, I mean…” Sam stops himself before he possibly says anything he might regret, and decides to proceed again, this time choosing each word carefully. “You shouldn’t do those things just because they’re what humans do. You should do them because it’s actually what you want.”

“I don’t know what I want anymore.”

And there it is. Sam’s mouth shuts. Castiel may not understand social norms and conventions, but at the very least he’s blunt about what he feels, and Sam isn’t sure if he should be grateful for it or if he should forsake it. On the one hand, it means he doesn’t have to dance around the truth like he so often does with Dean. But on the other, it means that he doesn’t get to believe in the lie that everything is fine and that the angel-turned-human sitting next to him in the car isn’t going through what the phrase ‘existential crisis’ fails to fully articulate.

Sam breathes.

“You know what, Cas?” His gaze shifts over to Castiel to see the ex-angel staring at his own hands like the lines in his palms will have answers inscribed in them. “Might be hard to believe, but you’re not alone in feeling that. It’s actually pretty common among humans.”

Castiel looks up, and in his blue eyes Sam sees wonder and joy and anguish all at once, stewing in his irises under shimmering waves of blue. “Is that true?” he asks, and for a moment Sam can hardly breathe, because no one should ever look at him like that, like he is the universe and the meaning of life is written on his lips, like he is the sky and there are stars and clouds that paint pictures and tell stories across his skin, like he is the world and all its valleys and mountains and deserts. Because that’s how Castiel is looking at him right now, like he’s something worth admiring, and Sam doesn’t know what to do or how to handle it.

How Dean could handle it, he’ll never know.

“Yes,” he says softly, the word as delicate as mist. “Yes,” he says, louder now, because he knows that even though he can’t be the world that Castiel is looking for, damned if he isn’t going to try. “So it’s okay to be lost. It’s okay to not know what to do. We’ll figure it out.”

“I can go with you?”

He asks, Sam knows, because too many times have they left him behind or pushed him away when he wasn’t useful to them anymore. Too many times did they ignore him and use him and treat him like a tool. Dean’s the most obvious offender, but Sam would never dare to absolve himself of any guilt—he’s done it, too, whether he wants to admit it or not.

This is his chance to make things right, however selfish his intentions may be.

“Yeah. Of course, Cas.”

“Thank you, Sam,” says Castiel sincerely, and that he should even need to say it all, when they’re friends, when sticking together should be a _given_ , makes Sam feel worse than he thought he would. He grips the steering wheel in his rough palms before he reaches for the radio dial.

“So,” he says with a smile too light for the heaviness on his shoulders, “got any music preferences?”

-

Castiel’s taste in music is… eccentric, to say in the least. Though Sam isn’t entirely sure what he expected. Jokingly, part of him thought Cas would gravitate towards opera or classical or Christian music or something, and while that certainly did make a small chunk of what the other played, almost ninety percent of what they listened to during the drive was a bizarre mixture of hip-hop, pop, and obscure ethnic stations.

Sam rubs his forehead. Dean would have popped a gasket. He almost smiles until he realizes that he needs to stop thinking about Dean.

The passenger side door opens, and Castiel steps out to join Sam outside, eyes hawking the perimeter with his usual stiffness. “This is the area?” he asks, and Sam nods.

They’re surrounded by trees. The musty scent of wet dirt permeates the air. Sam can tell it’s rained here recently, because as they make their way to the cottage, sometimes droplets of water will spill from the trees’ fat leaves and speckle their shoulders with dark spots. The canopies are so thick that the light comes down like needles, thin slivers of gold that highlight the dewdrops caught in moss and the brilliant greens of unfurled ferns. Castiel walks behind him, sometimes kicking twigs or shifting fallen leaves aside with his foot, his gaze cast downward as they go.

Up ahead, a wooden cottage nestles among bushes. Sam goes up the steps and unlocks the door, swinging it open as he takes a look inside. The furnishings look cozy and comfortable; there’s a bookshelf, a TV, and a fireplace surrounded by couches. The kitchen and living area are partitioned separately from the bedroom, which contains a single king-sized bed. He sets down his stuff and then looks over his shoulder with a big smile.

Castiel follows Sam in and inspects the interior like it’s a crime scene. Sam can’t tell if Cas is happy with it or not, and he won’t lie—it makes him a little anxious, as if his happiness depends on whether or not Cas will approve of the cottage that isn’t even his.

Finally, Castiel settles down onto the couch, and he begins to unwind. For many, unwinding is a turn of phrase, but for Castiel, it’s almost literal: slowly, all the taut and tense muscles in his body relax, piece by piece, starting with his spine and the way his shoulders slump, the loosening of his fingers and his neck, and last and most important of all, his face. The wrinkles between his brows shallow out and the skin around his eyes seems to settle, and at certain angles Sam can dare to imagine that Cas might even be smiling.

“So, what d’you think?” Sam asks, though he thinks he already knows the answer.

“It’s pleasant,” says Castiel, and this time he smiles for real, and just like that his face is golden: lit up with the halo of his smile, and the wrinkles that form under his eyes and around his mouth are easy and soft. “I like it. It’s different from where you normally stay.”

Sam sits down on the other couch and nods. He takes note of the way the cushion completely sinks under his weight, instead of rigidly resisting him like a rock. “Yeah, for sure. But uh, don’t get too comfortable, you know? If we’re lucky, we’ll wrap this up quickly and be on our way.”

If Castiel heard Sam, he doesn’t show it; his attention has been turned to the window. The light that suffuses through the dusty panes illuminates the edges of his silhouette with yellow. Not for the first time—and certainly not for the last—Sam can’t help but think that even human, Castiel is still an angel.

-

At the hunter’s insistence, Castiel stays behind Sam and carries a sawed-off shotgun like it’s his newborn. He thinks it’s pointless, of course. If angel-on-angel violence is the only thing happening here, then a shotgun will do nothing. Every so often, he slips one hand free of the barrel and tucks his fingers beneath his jacket, probing for the familiar handle of his angel blade. When he finds it, he grasps it tight, and it takes him a few seconds to will himself to let go and put his hand back on the gun.

Sam is talking, though Castiel finds it hard to listen. Strange, how easily the human attention wavers, how much concentration it requires to hold. When he was an angel he could listen to his garrison while simultaneously recording the happenings around him easily. Now, even a simple conversation demands too much of him, he feels. He thinks about worms and beetles and ants and not at all about the safety precautions Sam is trying to go over with him. He considers the cuckoo wasp, which lays its eggs in the nest of an unknowing other host insect. The cuckoo larvae consume the surrounding eggs, and the host doesn’t even notice; it continues to bring back sustenance that the cuckoo larvae take for themselves. Castiel considers the implications of this. He considers the net gain of life.

“Hey, man, are you listening?”

Castiel looks up, finally ripping his sight from the earth. He palms the shotgun in his hands. Sam has his head turned over his shoulder just enough that they can see each other, and he has an expression on his face that’s between exasperation and amusement. It’s a look he wears with Cas often.

“Yes,” Castiel replies stiffly.

“You’re a terrible liar,” says Sam.

Castiel wants to tell Sam that isn’t true, but the words don’t make it out because they’re interrupted by the sound of a twig snapping and his lips promptly slam shut. Sam jolts and whips his head in the approximate direction of the noise, his pistol up in a flash, finger shuddering over the trigger.

For too many seconds there is only silence. The two of them stare down a bramble of twigs and bushes with firearms in hand. It could be an angel. It could be Gadreel. It could also be a deer or a random passer-by or anything. It—

It’s a fucking _bear_.

It charges with a bellow, great big paws propelling it forward in aggressive strides, straight for Castiel. He scrambles back, fumbling with the shotgun as his instinct tells him to grab for his angel blade while his mind tells him to shoot the hulking creature. His hands take too long to decide, and the beast is upon him, crushing him with its mass, breathing heavily onto his face as it snarls. He cries out, his eyes closing from the pain, more fresh and more visceral than he can ever remember pain being, and the sound of gunshots rings through the air before the weight is lifted off of him, and he lies there, gasping, his body sore like he’s been beaten by a thousand comets, when in reality he thinks perhaps he just bruised his torso, though he can’t really be sure because his brain is still moving too slow for reality, one second being processed for every hundred heartbeats that pound inside his head.

Sam holds him and says his name. It sounds janky inside his ears. _Cas, Cas, Cas, Castiel_. It does not have the delicate poetry of angels’ tongues. It doesn’t burst from the lips like a supernova. It sounds like an epithet.

“Sam?” he croaks in a voice that feels like it came from somewhere else. Sam’s blurry expression morphs from worry into relief back into worry. He places his hands on Castiel’s cheeks and starts to talk again, but Castiel does not understand. It all sounds like water. Slowly, he can feel himself sinking. Darkness edges in from the corners of his vision, and he does not fight back, because it makes the pain go away and everything hurts so much.

-

Castiel wakes up to the smell of tomato soup, and the first thing that comes to him is the perception of his human hands and the way the bedsheets feel against his skin. He flexes his fingers and—winces. His arms are sore, from shoulder down to wrist, and pain flares through him like a ripple unfolding. He’s under the weight of a soft and heavy blanket, and for a moment he just lies there, relishing in the warmth of being surrounded by such gentle textures.

And then he opens his eyes. The lights in the cabin have been dimmed, and he can just barely make out Sam’s silhouette in the kitchen, whose back is turned towards Cas with his front facing the countertop. There’s the sound of metal clinking against porcelain.

“Sam?” Castiel groans, his throat drier than he thought it would be. Sensations come to him slowly, as if his brain can’t seem to handle them all at once, and one by one he becomes more aware of the human body he’s in, of the pain in his joints and the bitter taste in his mouth.

Waking up is always a procedure for Castiel—because every morning he wakes up he first has to come to terms with the fact that he is waking up at all, for it means that he was once asleep. And when he opens his eyes he must come to terms with the fact that there are only two, and that they can only see colors with wavelengths between 390 and 700 nanometers when he used to be able to see them all. And when he moves his hands he comes to terms with the fact that he has only five fingers on each of his two arms, and he has only one face, and when he thinks of moving, his vessel moves right away, instead of halted and controlled by the careful nudging of his angelic self.

He must stop thinking of this as his vessel. This is now _him_. This is something he must come to terms with, too, no matter how much it hurts.

“Cas?” Sam turns, and the light from the kitchen lamps washes his face with gold and white. “Hey, you okay?” He steps into the bedroom with a bowl in his hands, and sets it down onto the nightstand. Castiel casts it a glance. It’s filled with a red liquid and small ringlets. Sam inhales, looking at Cas, then back at the bowl, then to Cas again. “It’s, uh. SpaghettiOs. Sorry I couldn’t make anything better, but… I felt like soup would go down easier.”

“SpaghettiOs,” Castiel repeats deliberately, each syllable carefully worried and considered on his tongue. His words create breathy ripples on the surface of the soup, and the small rings bob about on the waves. He picks up the spoon and dips it into the liquid. A spoonful of SpaghettiOs enters the cup of the spoon, and then he goes to directly stick it into his mouth.

It burns. Instantly, he yanks the spoon out and hisses, brows creased in an offended expression. A bit of red soup dribbles down his chin, and he wipes it away with the back of his hand. “It’s hot,” he says, looking at Sam with large eyes. Did Sam make it burning hot on purpose? Is this how humans eat their food?

Sam gapes and closes his mouth, shaking his head and then all of a sudden—laughing. It’s a great and deep laugh, Sam’s, and at first Castiel feels insulted, but Sam’s smile is like a virus and soon he can’t help but smile too, embarrassed at how seriously he reacted to something as simple as a burned tongue. Sam rubs his eyes with his fingers and speaks in bursts, halted by the sounds of his puffing chuckles. “Dude, you need to blow on it first. It just came out of the microwave; it’s gonna be really hot.”

Castiel gazes at the bowl of SpaghettiOs again. Belatedly, he realizes that there’s steam rising from it, just barely visible in the hints of the amber light. As an angel, he never had to pay it notice; nothing could burn him, not even the stars. But now, even a bowl of hot soup can scald his membranes, and he reminds himself once again of the fragility of the human condition. He tries once again, dipping the spoon in and this time lifting it to his lips without sticking it right in. He blows gently for a few seconds, and then tips it into his mouth.

It tastes… salty. And weird. But that about describes pretty much everything he’s eaten thus far in his time as a human, so it’s nothing new. Though what _is_ new is definitely the warmth—much of what he’s eaten has been cold from having spent hours out in the garbage. Warm food feels nice, he thinks; the heat radiates from the inside out, and it soothes his core. Several spoonfuls later and he’s keenly aware of the fact that Sam is staring at him; he raises his eyes to meet Sam’s and holds the other’s gaze as firmly as he once might have held Dean’s.

And, just like Dean, Sam gives first, his eyes flitting to the side, the corners of his lips twitching. “Sorry,” he mutters. “Just… wanted to make sure you didn’t burn yourself again.”

“I’m not a child, Sam.”

“I know. But you’ve never been human before. And so you’ve never learned all the things we learned at a young age about what it’s like being human.”

Sam’s words make sense, of course, but Castiel can’t help but nurse his wounded pride. He hates being treated like he’s an infant. He is ( _was_ ) an ageless being, here since time immemorial—and here he is, burning his tongue on a spoonful of scalding SpaghettiOs.

How the mighty have fallen. Literally, in this case.

“So uh, you never answered my question,” says Sam, leaning back against the wall, arms crossed over his chest. “How are you holding up?”

Castiel lowers the spoon and lets it rest against the rim of the bowl. “I’m sore,” he replies frankly. “Moving my arm is painful. Moving my body is painful. Just the thought of walking terrifies me.”

Sam nods, lips pursed. “Yeah, being mauled by a bear will do that to you. Though uh, you got pretty lucky. As far as I could tell there wasn’t really any serious damage. Just some bruises and scrapes.”

“How long until these wounds recover? We need to resume our search for Gadreel.”

Sam’s expression twists, his eyebrows coming together to form a deep crease. “What?”

Castiel cocks his head. “Sam, I made a promise to you that I would do everything in my power to help you track down Gadreel,” he replies. “Me reclining in bed while you make me SpaghettiOs is certainly not—”

“Cas, don’t be ridiculous,” Sam cuts in. “You’re injured. And yeah, it sucks, because we had shit to do, but you’re gonna be more bother than help all banged up like that. Let’s just spend the next few days resting, and then… we’ll figure out what to do from there, okay?”

“But for how long?”

The look Sam gives Castiel is drawn and tired. He rubs a hand down his face and breathes. “I don’t know, man. However long it takes.” Then he rises, slowly, as if his body weighs more than his legs can handle, and he shuffles out of the room. His silhouette obscures the light that emanates from the kitchen, and for a moment Castiel lies there in darkness, the scent of tomato soup heavy on his burned tongue.


	3. requies.

_And the light is sweet,_  
_And a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun._  
_For if a man live many years,_  
_Let him rejoice in them all,_  
_And remember the days of darkness,_  
_For they shall be many._  
_All that cometh is vanity._  
Ecclesiastes 11:7-8

-

The cabin has a washing machine, but no dryer. Sam’s familiar with this sort of assembly, though he’s never actually had to use it before—even when he lived in apartments and homes for short whiles (and boy, if _that_ doesn’t stir up the most melancholy memories), there was always a washer and dryer pair, or at least a laundromat within close range.

Here, however, there’s nothing but trees and bushes for miles, and if any other people are around in the area they’re definitely not going to be operating laundromats, that’s for sure. So it’s like this that he steps outside into the timid morning with an armful of Cas’s wet clothes, ready to get to work before Cas has even woken up. A few pale rays meet his face and make the hairs on his arms shine white. There’s a rope already set up by the cabin’s owners, connecting a corner to a branch, and Sam gets to work, carefully straightening out and hanging up each article of clothing as best as he can. Some of the clothing got totally messed up by the bear; those, Sam threw away, but others were salvageable or just plain dirty, presumably from Cas’s homelessness. The thought leaves a bitter taste in his mouth, and his fingers hesitate over any holes and tears they find, however tiny.

The front door swings open, and Sam turns his head to see Cas standing there, slumped over the doorway. He’s dressed in Sam’s spare clothing, which is incredibly loose and hangs down on his slight frame, and a fleece blanket drapes over his shoulders that he keeps clasped together with his hand. “What are you doing?” he asks, voice rough and groggy from his waking.

“Hanging up your clothes to dry.”

Castiel cranes his neck and looks around, his eyes flitting over the woods. “The air here is so damp. Are you sure they’ll even dry?”

Sam pauses, lowering his arms. “It’ll get dryer in the afternoon, hopefully. And anyways, your clothes are still more damp than the air is, so…”

“Thank you, Sam,” says Castiel all of a sudden, and Sam has to stop and consciously breathe. That Castiel can say these things with such sincerity and purity is—it’s too much to handle. Humans are not supposed to be like this. Humans lie and hide their feelings while Castiel wears his heart on his lips.

Sam’s fingers squeeze around a fistful of wet fabric. “It’s nothing,” he says, his voice airy with wonder. “Just, uh… keeping myself busy, you know?”

“Can I help?”

Sam looks at Cas, all wrapped up and hunched over. Instinctively he wants to say ‘no’, but then his features soften out, and he forces an easy smile onto his mouth. Sam knows that Cas is happiest when he feels useful, and as toxic as that is, Sam would do anything right now to make his friend happy. “Yeah, sure. Think you can hold all these clothes? It’s kinda hard to hang them up and carry them at the same time.”

“Of course, Sam,” Castiel replies, and hobbles down the steps, still keeping the blanket wound tightly about his shoulders. With his other hand he awkwardly holds the bundle of damp clothing against his body and follows Sam, who takes the articles one by one and hangs them up to dry.

The last few pieces of clothing are underwear, and Sam can’t help but blush as he tenderly grasps Castiel’s boxers by the hem, pinching it between his thumb and forefinger like it’s toxic. Castiel doesn’t seem to notice the tension, though, and he continues to stare at Sam the way he’s been doing this entire time.

Finally, Castiel notices Sam’s hesitation and tilts his head. “Is something wrong?”

Sam jolts and drops the underwear. It falls to the ground like a sad deflated balloon. The two of them look down at the pair of now dirty boxers, a stark heather grey against the brown of the fallen leaves and soil.

Castiel looks up first. “Sam?”

“Um.” Sam opens his mouth and closes it. He quickly snatches up the dirty underwear and tries to wipe away all the crap stuck to it. “I’m so sorry, it’s just…” He laughs nervously, hating himself internally for how much worse he’s making this, when it probably wasn’t weird at all until he had to go ahead and _make_ it weird. It was never weird when it was Dean’s, so why does it have to be weird _now_? God damn it, Sam. “It’s… a little awkward, you know? Handling the unmentionables of an angel of the Lord, and all.”

“You know I’m not an angel anymore.”

“R… right.” Still, though, Castiel’s words, however sincere, can’t seem to stop the heat creeping into Sam’s cheeks. He turns his head away and bunches up the boxers in his hands. “You know what? Since this got dirty again, I uh… think I’ll just… give it another wash or something.”

Castiel nods as gravely as if Sam were speaking about the Apocalypse rather than about the sorry state of his undergarments. “Perhaps that would be for the best,” he rumbles seriously, and _that_ is the killer. Sam just can’t take it anymore.

He loses his shit. He guffaws, drops the underwear again, and grabs at his stomach as puffs of laughter, strong and uninhibited, bubble up from his gut and come out his mouth loud and deep. This whole situation is just so fucking ridiculous, and he just—he just can’t do it anymore. Here he is, the boy with the demon blood, tainted, sinful, dirty, hanging up an angel’s underwear to dry—an angel whom he just fed SpaghettiOs and gave his sweatpants to, who’s so small compared to him that said sweatpants droop down his waist like one of those cool teenagers with the sagging pants. For a while Sam just lets himself loose like this—laughing, wiping away tears from his eyes, and then he straightens himself back up to see Castiel still staring at him, bewildered with his head canted to the side.

“I’m sorry,” Sam breathes, still seeing Cas through the crescents of his grin. “I just… I’m sorry. It’s just too funny.”

And then—in that magical moment Sam didn’t even realize he was craving—Castiel smiles back, too. It’s timid, and comes forth gradually, but it shines like the sun and Sam feels like he has to look away because it’s so overwhelming in its radiance and rarity. His throat is suddenly very dry. He wonders when it last was that he drank water.

Castiel crouches down and picks up his soiled boxers. Tenderly, he picks away the clumps of dirt from the buttocks and then goes to hang them up himself. “It will be easier to simply wipe off the dirt when it’s dry.” The gentle smile is still on his lips, and happiness makes all the tiredness and pain disappear from his features. Joy makes an ageless being look young.

“Oh.” Sam swallows. He isn’t sure why he didn’t think of that. “Right.”

-

Around noon, Sam begins to prepare lunch. Feeling a little apologetic over the SpaghettiOs, he resolves to make something a little bit more elaborate with what ingredients are available to him.

Actually, the cabin is quite well-stocked; he’s never seen anything like it before in his life of tumbling between motels and cheap apartments and—for a few precious years—college dorms. There’s squash and garlic and barley, herbs and soup stock and olive oil, carrots and peas and rice…. Behind closed doors, Sam has always dreamed of a kitchen like this: one free of instant packaged foods and instead filled to the brim with ingredients bought not from a corner store but from a _supermarket_.

If Dean were here, he’d be saying something about suburbia in a scornful manner. Sam, on the other hand, has secretly always coveted suburbia. Not just the image of it, but the lifestyle, the _meaning_ of it—the normalcy, the pleasantry, the freedom from life on the road and bedbugs on rocky mattresses.

He wants to try and make a vegetable soup.

He uses a recipe he found online and starts to assemble the ingredients onto the counter. As he’s doing this, Castiel shuffles in from the bedroom, the blanket now shed from his shoulders, although he still leans on the wall for support. His hair is mussed up and there are bags under his eyes, and Sam has to quash the nibbling thought of how endearing he looks. (God damn it, Sam. This is an _angel_ we’re talking about, here. Is. Was. It doesn’t matter.)

Sam flashes Cas a tiny smile. Castiel shuffles over, face scrunched in curiosity. “What are you doing?” he asks, eyes assessing over the array of vegetables lying on the countertop.

“Just thought I’d try something a little more hands-on than warming up a can of SpaghettiOs.” Sam pulls the last ingredient out of the refrigerator and closes the door. He knows the question Castiel is going to ask before it’s even spoken, and he decides to cut right to it: “Do you want to help?”

Castiel looks up at Sam and blinks owlishly. “Of course,” he responds, as he always does, and steps over to the counter. “What can I do?”

“Well, before they can be added into the soup, these ingredients have to be sliced up.” Sam passes over a cutting board and then holds out a knife to Castiel carefully. He knows Cas isn’t a child, and that the angel-turned-man has been handling blades for longer than Sam’s been alive times a thousand, but still—he can’t help but worry, even if it’s not his place to.

Once again, he prays Castiel can forgive him for his transgressions.

Castiel takes the knife gingerly and begins to cut. With one hand he holds the mushroom still and with the other he makes careful incisions with a precision that Sam didn’t know he had. Castiel may not have his grace anymore, but the way he uses his hands—how he nudges his fingers to perfect even the smallest and most insignificant of details—could only be described as graceful.

Contented, Sam turns away and gets to work on his end of things. He’s in the midst of dicing carrots when he hears Castiel speak.

“This recipe calls for a pound of mushrooms, but we don’t have a scale in here. How are we going to measure for one pound?”

Sam turns his head to see Castiel staring intensely at the pile of sliced mushrooms on his cutting board, as if he could gauge their weight just by looking. Maybe at one time he could have, but now all he’s accomplishing is giving off the appearance of being sexually attracted to mushrooms, with how hard he’s staring.

Sam snorts at the thought and then replies, “It doesn’t have to be exact. Just eyeball it. Kinda like you’re doing now, but with less… y’know, scrutiny.”

Castiel’s eyes flit away from the mushrooms to gaze upon Sam instead. “But then it wouldn’t be following the recipe if it weren’t exact.”

“I mean, there’s no way we can get it to be _exact_ , even with a scale. It’ll always be a decimal off or something. Plus, we’re just making some soup—it’ll still taste fine even if it’s not machine-perfect.”

Castiel’s brows draw together as he turns his attention back to the cutting board. He tilts his head slowly in that way he always does, as if changing his angle will give him an insight that the upright view does not. “So is this how humans always cook? With approximations?”

“Generally speaking, yeah.”

“Then how can they guarantee that the flavor will always be the same?”

“They can’t,” says Sam, and Castiel’s chin lifts, eyes wide with confusion. Because Dean isn’t here, because it’s only Sam, that familiar searching expression of _tell me_ is now directed strictly at him and him alone, and if he plans on staying in this cabin with Cas for more than a week without running off his rocker then he’d better get used to it now. “But that’s part of the joy of cooking, you know? Sometimes the little variations can make it taste better than it did before.”

“But then that means sometimes it can also taste worse.”

Sam smiles tightly, his dimples showing as his lips pull up. “That’s right,” he says, and turns back to the counter. He dices carrots and tries not to sneak any more glances at Cas. If Cas has any more questions for him, he doesn’t have the confidence that he’ll be able to answer them the way he wishes he could. Because he wants more than anything to be the answer that Castiel is looking for, no matter how doomed to failure that dream is. Sam wants to be able to want something, just once. He wants to be able to dream again.

-

The resulting soup is a deep orange in color, and Castiel finds the aroma quite appetizing. Sam scoops it into bowls for the both of them, and Castiel sits down at the table, gazing at the food he helped create with wonder. This one is steaming, too, and he’s now learned from his mistakes: after he dips his spoon in gently, he blows before slurping it up.

The flavor is… pleasant. Castiel has never really known what it means to eat for pleasure, not just for survival. When he would go through dumpsters or get whatever was cheap, there were certainly things he liked less than others, but none of them could he really refer to as a favorite. Even the SpaghettiOs Sam gave him were largely bland and uninteresting; this, however, pops in his mouth, and more importantly it warms his heart. This wasn’t something assembled by a machine and packaged and shipped for miles. This was something he and Sam made—together.

The thought makes him happy.

“So, what’s the verdict on our approximately vegetable soup?” asks Sam, his tone and expression light with humor. He looks good like that, Castiel thinks. It’s when humans are happy that Castiel remembers why he fell for them. It’s when humans smile that he reminds himself that this is why he rebelled; this was God’s original plan; that the angels should be their shepherds and love them more than they loved Him.

“It’s good,” says Castiel, and he smiles, too. When he was an angel he was much less conscious of his expressions; often, he felt that his vessel was merely trying in vain to emulate the motions of his true form. But now, like this, he can _feel_ it when his vessel—when he smiles. Can feel his cheeks tighten, his eyes crinkle, his lips turn upwards. It feels nice. It feels relieving.

It feels easy in a way that it never felt before.

“See? You just gotta believe.” Sam waves his spoon as if accentuating his point before he gobbles down several more gulps of the soup. Castiel watches him eat. He wonders if Sam is aware of the gravity of his words. Of what it means to tell an angel to _believe_.

Castiel believes, all right. He believes in Sam Winchester.

-

The wards Castiel set up have a bit of a range on them, so they actually cover a good radius around the cabin. Since they’re effectively safe while they’re inside that zone, Sam decides now would be a good time to give the area a tour, see if there’s anything worth noting that wasn’t already in the advertisement for the cabin. He’s making sure his shoes are tied on right when Castiel appears from the din of the bedroom, peering over in curiosity.

“Where are you going?” he asks.

Sam glances up and presses his lips together. “Just gonna go for a quick tour around the area, see what’s inside the perimeter.”

Castiel nods. “I suppose I couldn’t go with you, then.”

Sam pauses, his fingers still grasping at the rough of his shoelaces. Logic tells him that Cas is right; he should stay behind. But the look on Cas’s face tells him otherwise, and Sam, sucker that he is, decides to listen to his soft heart. He glances up from his shoes. “Honestly? Why the hell not. We should be safe so long as we stay close to the cabin.”

Castiel brightens up, his brows lifting. “I won’t slow you down,” he says right away, and it’s such a _Cas_ thing to do: to reassure that he won’t be a burden, even when he’s been invited. It’s things like this that make Sam doubt himself—that make him wonder if it really was selfish of him to bring Cas along, when he’s already so devoid of purpose that it almost seems like Sam is taking advantage of him, exploiting his need to be needed.

Standing up, Sam elects to gives Castiel a pat on the back. Cas turns his head as if bewildered by the gesture before a weary smile makes its way onto his face.

No, Sam decides. It’s fine. Because even if it’s impossible, he wants to try to prove something to Castiel. He wants to prove to Cas that it’s okay to not have purpose, that he can still be happy without having to be useful or needed. How someone like Sam is supposed to do that, he has no idea. But he would do and give anything to show this once-angel that there is joy in humanity. That there is a fire in merely living.

They exit the cabin, with Castiel using whatever support he can find to keep himself upright as he follows Sam past the clothesline into the thick of the forest. Sam is reminded vaguely of their initial walk towards the cottage from the car: him in front with Cas trailing behind, though obviously last time Cas wasn’t limping and injured.

Immediately surrounding the vicinity is mostly just trees and… trees. Sam can’t say he’s surprised. They are in the middle of the woods, after all. The cabin advertisement did state that there was a river, though, and he thinks that’s at least worth checking out.

He stops hearing Castiel’s footfalls and turns his head to the side to see that Cas has stopped, his neck craned to gaze in one direction with military focus. Sam’s brows knit together. “Something there?”

Castiel lifts his hand and motions for Sam to be still. Then, he slowly points to a spot beyond the brush. Sam’s eyes follow the path laid out by Cas’s finger until they stop on a patch of tawny fur.

It’s a buck. Its antlers curve upwards from its graceful head like a crown of carved branches. It watches like a sentinel, ears perked, body completely still.

Castiel’s face is unreadably blank. He stalks forward, suddenly fearless, and Sam experiences a flurry of panic that grips his heart and squeezes it into a faster beat. He wants to tell Cas that while deer are normally very docile creatures, it’s entirely possible that this one could still attack, and that Cas should really get away from it now because he’s in no condition to take another hit even if it’s just from some deer, and what the hell are you doing trying to get close to a wild animal anyways, Cas?

His prayers are answered, and the buck bolts away once Castiel gets too close, striding away into the thicket. For a beat Castiel just stands there, as still as the deer once was. Sam can’t see his face from this angle, but somehow he gets the feeling that something is amiss.

“…Hey, Cas. Is everything okay?”

Finally, Castiel reorients himself to face Sam, and Sam can see his startlingly numb expression. “I couldn’t communicate with him at all,” he says softly, and looks at his hands like it’s their fault that he has lost his ability to commune with nature.

Sam inhales. There are so many things he’s forgotten when it comes to what Castiel has lost by becoming human. It occurs to him that he’ll never really know the true multitude of wonders that were ripped away from Cas. Having to eat, having to sleep, having to shower and drink and rest… those don’t even scratch the iceberg’s tip. There is a vast and bottomless void of sensations and experiences that Sam can’t even comprehend having, let alone losing.

How arrogant of him to believe that he could show Castiel that there is a fire in humanity, when Castiel was once the light that pours from the heavens. Flames flicker and die out, but light is forever; unending and merciless until the end of time. Castiel will never love humanity the way Sam wishes he could. Castiel loves humanity as he would love his child. He never wanted to _become_ it.

By the time these thoughts are done traveling through Sam’s mind, Castiel has already resumed walking. He goes from tree to tree, hands grasping at bark to keep him upright. Sam watches him go for a few moments. Watches the way his hunched silhouette sways with every step like he can barely stay standing. Sam wants to respect that Castiel doesn’t want his help, yet there’s that creeping worry again that he knows is ultimately selfish.

Sam catches up to Castiel quickly. “There’s a river up ahead that I wanna check out. Don’t think there’ll be anything too interesting there, but… it’s pretty hot today, so it might be fun to take a dip or something.”

“I don’t know how to swim,” says Castiel.

“It’s not too hard. I could try teaching you. Not that I’m a great swimmer or anything, but…” Sam rubs the back of his head and chuckles lightly. He glances back to see Cas’s face scrunched in thought. The other doesn’t reply.

It takes a few more minutes of walking to get to the river. They know they’re getting close when they start to hear the sound of the water running; eventually, the trees thin out and they step into an open clearing bisected by a thick, green stream. The shore is mostly composed of smooth pebbles, and the current is fast enough that Sam is pretty sure a wounded person should not be leaping in.

Even though he was kind of joking about the whole ‘teaching Cas to swim’ thing, he can’t deny he’s a little disappointed.

He goes to unbutton his flannel shirt. Castiel curiously watches him strip, and Sam hesitates over the hem of his undershirt.

“Dude. You’re, uh. You’re staring.”

Castiel blinks, cocking his head. Then he seems to realize that he shouldn’t do that, even if he doesn’t understand why, and turns away. “My apologies.”

Sam presses his lips together, trying not to make another one of his ‘I love you but sometimes you can be _so_ ’ smiles. He peels off his undershirt and shimmies out of his jeans, then neatly places his socks inside his shoes and sets them aside.

He considers going right into the water before Cas can see his bare torso, but then he thinks better of it. They’re going to be spending a lot of time together—better to get it out of the way now than later. “Okay, you can turn around now.”

Castiel rotates, evidently confused on why he had to look away to begin with. Then his brows come together and his eyes focus on where Sam knew they would focus. Even though Sam braced himself for this ahead of time, it still feels like knives in his skin. Castiel is— _was_ an angel, he remembers. He might not see it the way Sam does. He might… he might react as some people do, with scorn and disdain and judgment. All of a sudden Sam begins to feel intense regret, and he wishes he hadn’t done this at all. He should have just gone right into the water. Better yet—he should never have thought about going for a swim in the first place.

“Your scars…” Castiel murmurs, and Sam’s heart crams its way up into his throat so that he can’t even speak. “They’re very unusual. How did you get them?”

The instinctive urge to cover his chest with his hands is overpowering, but Sam quashes it under a bout of forced bravery. A nervous smile twitches at the corners of his mouth. “They’re surgery scars,” he explains. “Because I…” his voice trails away. He stops himself. _I never felt right in my body_ , he wanted to say, but he’s talking to an _angel of the Lord_.

The fear of blasphemy takes him again, and he wonders once more if this is just yet another reason why God forsook him; Sam Winchester, the boy with the demon blood, the would-be Boy King of Hell, who took the gift of life and baptized it with demon sick, who hated the body that God gave him and wished he had received another.

He blasphemes just by existing, and as much as he would like to forget that, every day that he sees himself is a reminder. It’s a reminder that he will never be what God meant for him to be.

Then Castiel takes Sam’s hands and lifts him from the pit of his thoughts. Sam’s eyes dart upwards to see Castiel’s face lit up with the shimmering reflection from the river. Lights flow and shift on his flesh and gild the edges of his hair with shining white.

“You are not creatures of flesh,” says Castiel in his softest rumble, “but of the soul. Your body is a temple, and it houses you, Sam Winchester. You will do with it as you see fit, so that it may suit the soul it guards. The building does not make the man; the man crafts the building and everything inside of it. And so you did not blaspheme, Sam. You merely made things right.”

Not for the first time and not for the last, Sam wonders what he did to deserve this angel’s love; he, who broke the 66th Seal and set Lucifer free, who now has his hands held in the gentle grip of a once-angel. He does not deserve this. He is unworthy.

He might cry. He really thinks he might, so he twists away, pulling himself out from Castiel’s grasp. He doesn’t think he can bear to look at Cas right now, so instead he wades into the water, cold and crisp against his bare feet. His throat is raw and tight, as if a rough string has been drawn around it, and his eyes burn with the sting of threatened tears. He keeps going until the water creeps up beyond his knees. The current rushes around his legs, and if he were any weaker, he’d fear of being swept away.

It takes him a while, but Sam gathers himself again and turns to face Castiel, who’s sitting on the shore with his head tilted. “Did I say something wrong?” Castiel asks, and Sam lets an easy smile take his face.

“No,” he says, and steps in deeper. “No, you didn’t.”

The water envelopes his torso. He shivers and marvels at what it feels like to sit on the cusp of clashing boundaries—his head still breathing in the warm and humid air, his body now submerged under the frigid stream. He glances at the riverside to see Castiel watching him, still bundled up in his oversized clothes.

“I wish you could come in.” Sam laughs and runs a hand through his hair, letting the strands turn dark with wet. “It’s really nice.”

“Humans are not equipped with the proper adaptations for aquatic life,” Castiel replies, and if Sam didn’t know any better he’d say Cas was scared.

“True, but humans always do things that they aren’t necessarily well equipped for.” Sam lies back on the surface of the water, arms folded beneath his head as his hair flares around him like petals. From this angle, he can see the quizzical way Cas regards him from his perch on the soil, and he pushes down the overwhelming urge to splash some water on his rumpled and, more importantly, _injured_ friend.

It occurs to Sam how surreal all of this is—that he and a former angel are peacefully passing time by in the woods, as if the gates of Heaven were not shut or as if ‘God’ were not once again merely an angel drunk on grandeur. As if they have all the time in the world to dance among flowers and leaves and play in the mud like children. He dips his head beneath the water and twirls, pushing himself down into the depths. The riverbed is lined with stones and thin fingers of swaying green, but scattered among the mundane are a few half shells of freshwater clams, lined and smooth and tiny. He reaches out to pluck one when he hears the muffled sound of a loud splash behind him.

Gasping, Sam yanks his head above the surface and wipes his hands over his face to see Castiel frantic in the river, limbs flailing uselessly as his oversized clothing weighs him down. Quickly—before Cas gets swept away by the current—Sam propels himself forward and grabs him, knotting his arms around the other’s shuddering torso. He swears his heart beats so angrily that it makes his whole body shake with every thrum, right against the pallor of Cas’s clammy skin.

“Cas, what the _hell_?”

“You—” Castiel splutters, his eyes wide. His hair sticks to his face and he coughs, droplets flying from his lips as he clings to Sam and shivers. “Humans can’t—they can’t breathe underwater. You were under for so long, I thought perhaps…”

Sam’s brows meet together and then he inhales, shaking his head. Of course. He should have warned him first. “I can hold my breath for a little longer than you think,” he says, and laughs softly as he holds Castiel’s quavering frame tightly against his own. He begins making his way back to the shore, taking deliberate steps as he pulls Cas along with him. “But… thanks, I guess.”

“I was afraid,” Castiel murmurs as he heaves himself from the water. His whole body trembles and he can no longer stand straight under the weight of his pain and the wet clothing clinging to his flesh. And so Sam becomes the pillar that Castiel must lean against.

“I’m sorry,” Sam breathes, because that wasn’t his intention; he never meant to make Cas worry for him. He never meant to make _anyone_ worry for him. He pushes his damp hair away from his face and then grasps Castiel by the arms. “Let’s get you changed into something dry and then head back, okay?”

Castiel looks up at Sam and nods. Sam can still feel him quivering against his palms, and he doesn’t know if it’s from the cold, the pain, or the fear.

-

The fireplace casts orange lights on Castiel’s silhouette, and Sam finds himself glancing up from his laptop screen every so often just to sneak peeks. A blazing halo of gold flickers across Cas’s face and highlights the wrinkles in his blanket, and from this angle Sam can’t really make out the other’s expression, though he dearly wishes he could.

“You doing okay?” he asks to the back of Castiel’s head, and the ex-angel does not answer. Instead, Cas wraps the woolen blanket more tightly around himself and hunches over like he’s concentrating the heat into his core. “If you’re still cold, I can try adding more wood,” Sam puts out cautiously.

“I am fine,” Castiel replies after a long pause. “Just… frustrated.”

“Frustrated?” Sam feels his brows rise and crinkle up his forehead. “With what?”

Castiel breathes, the sound of his lungs wet against the dry crackle of the firewood. “We are wasting time,” he whispers to the flames. “Every second that I spend infirm and weak is a second we could have been spending hunting down Gadreel and Metatron.” His fingers clutch at the edges of the blanket, the knobs of his knuckles paling. “While we grow older and more complacent, the angels do not tire. Metatron and his forces will not rest; they will continue killing and converting other angels. I cannot help but feel that every moment I spend in this cabin is but vanity. We should be out there, injured or not, seeking out Gadreel and helping my brothers and sisters. Not in here, where it is warm and soft and too easy to forget what we came here for.”

“Cas…” Sam sets his laptop aside and shuffles over to the heap of blankets that encase what was once his brother’s angel. He lowers his body down and feels the hot air from the fireplace lick against his skin. Now he sees Castiel’s face from the side, all angled and harsh and stern, and he reaches out his hand to place it delicately on his friend. “If we go out there right now, we’ll only end up making things worse for us. You’re hurt. You need to rest.”

Castiel turns his head so that his profile darkens, almost black against the glow of the firelight. “I came here to help you, not weigh you down. I’ve only become a burden.”

“No,” says Sam firmly. “No—don’t say that. You’re never a burden.” And he would do anything under the heavens to erase every last echo of that thought from Castiel’s mind. Whether it he was he who planted it, or Dean, or God, or the angels, he doesn’t know, but that thought, that idea that Castiel is an object or a tool and that when he cannot serve he is only a bother—that thought is a poison. A poison that coats the brain and the tongue and even the eyes and ears.

“How can you say such a thing?” Castiel snaps suddenly, ripping his body away. His shoulders slump inwards and his voice comes rough and shaky. “What I said was the truth. Every moment spent here is a waste.”

Sam’s lips part then shut, and something in his chest clenches so hard that tears threaten his sight. “Every moment?” he asks, because he is only human, and he can only take so much of this, this open mockery of the past few days he’s come to cherish more than he could ever admit. “Every moment we spent together was a waste?” He grasps Castiel by the arms. “All of the things we said and did together, none of that meant anything to you?”

Castiel twists out of Sam’s grip, the blanket falling from his frame. The anger that swells his chest is not the anger that Sam has always known in him. There is no righteous fury, no wrath; only rage, passionate and burning and _human_ , and in those blue eyes it cracks the ice and is as dark as the abyss. “You cannot possibly hope to measure fleeting pleasures against the fate of the world,” he rebukes. “I meant every word of what I said. We waste our time with futile hedonisms. Angels are _dying_ and we are doing nothing. Our time here was _meaningless_.”

“ _Meaningless_?” Sam repeats, belligerent now as Castiel stokes the inferno of his beating heart. “How could you say that? The times we shared, the… the things we did… maybe those meant nothing to you, and sure, they don’t contribute at all to stopping Metatron, but… they still _meant_ something. They mean something to _me_ , Cas. How can you just toss all of that aside like it’s nothing?”

“How small-minded are you, that you would put your little joys above the good of the world?” Castiel seethes. “In face of that, the times we shared mean _nothing_ to me.”

Sam flinches. Castiel’s voice alone has struck him. Silent words burn his throat raw and bubble up into tears, but he will not give them the honor of speech. Instead he jerks away and stands, his fingers tensing into fists as he turns his back on the fire, letting the heat roil off his spine. He says nothing because nothing can be said. For he had thought… _clearly in error_ … he had thought there was _something_ … something _more_.

He had thought that perhaps—though he does not deserve it, though he deserves nothing—perhaps his brother’s angel could be _his_ angel, too.

But now he knows it will never be true. Because the smiles they shared together, the laughter, the SpaghettiO’s and vegetable soups and dirty unmentionables and dips in the shining river, all of those and more meant nothing to his brother’s angel. In Castiel’s eyes, Sam is still that tainted soul, the boy who drank the demon blood, the sinner. The Winchester that doesn’t matter.

And so Sam runs. If Castiel speaks, he doesn’t hear; he is already at the door, tearing it open and thrusting himself into the night. The darkness swallows him up, and just as a river carries stones downstream, he casts those memories into the water and hopes that they drift away. Because if those times he came to love meant nothing to Castiel, then they will mean nothing to him, either.


	4. casurus.

_Behold, He putteth no trust in His servants,_  
_And His angels He chargeth with folly;_  
_How much more them that dwell in houses of clay,_  
_Whose foundation is in the dust, who are crushed before the moth!_  
Job 4:18-19

-

The rising sun hits Castiel directly in the face and he wakes early, pulled from the scape of his dreams by the pale light filtering through the curtains. Groggy, he blinks and rolls over, turning his back to the sun. Ordinarily, the light would have hit Sam first, and only after rising over Sam’s body would the light have reached Castiel.

Now, where Sam should normally be, there is only the flat horizon of a blanket, and Castiel wakes alone with no one’s soft silhouette to greet him. It’s strange that it bothers him, he thinks; he and Sam have only been staying together for a few days, and yet the absence of the other body that once shared this bed is felt almost to his core.

Castiel slides out from under the covers and then steps outside of the cabin with Sam’s oversized jacket drooping off of his shoulders. Already, he can feel his human flesh healing. Where each step used to summon jolts of pain, there are only vague throbs that bloom in his legs; the pressure that once crushed his chest feels less like the jaws of Leviathan and more like a tightly-wound brace.

He hobbles forward, using a stick for support as he heads into the forest. The path that he and Sam walked not so many days ago is still lightly trampled, the impressions of their footfalls left behind in the browned flattened leaves.

Like this, alone, Castiel retraces their steps. He follows the trail to the place where he met the deer. He passes by the bushels of poison ivy— _leaves of three, let it be_ —and the strange stack of grey stones that Sam had called a _cairn_. He stops when he gets to the bank of the river, where Sam’s bare footprints still remain in the dried mud. For a moment he merely stands there, feet still planted on the firm ground, before he sits, settling onto the dry dirt just a few steps away from the shore.

The shimmering river pulls his eyes to its surface, and he finds himself gazing at the reflections left flickering on the trunks of the nearby trees. When he was an angel, a sight like this would have instilled him with love for God’s creation. It would be a reminder to him of his mission: to protect humanity and the world, so that moments of tender beauty like this could live on. Moments like this were fragments of perfection, of glory and of grace.

But Castiel is not an angel anymore, and when he looks at the water he sees not divine mercy nor the light of Heaven but Sam Winchester, exposed and stuttering and hunched over with lights glimmering on his skin. He sees Sam turn to him, lips parted, the scars on his chest pale and pinked, eyes wide as their hands clasp together and he whispers a benediction into the airs between their faces.

Castiel tosses a stone, and the ripples shatter the continuum of both the river and his frenzied visions. He watches the ripples slowly weaken and shallow out, the amplitudes of their waves diminishing until nothing is left at all.

“Did I err?” he asks, and the stream says nothing back. “Please tell me,” he murmurs, and clasps his hands together, his head dipping to meet his thumbs in the bowed position of humbled prayer. “Please tell me what to do.”

The river bubbles and roars, rumbles and breathes. But it cannot wash clean the image of Sam Winchester from Castiel’s head.

-

There is blood on the boundary. Castiel crouches down and reaches out his hand, feeling the droplets with the pad of his finger to see that it couldn’t have been spilled too long ago.

(The image of Sam, beaten and bleeding, flashes through his mind, so vivid he almost curses.)

He stands. This is a trap and he knows it and doesn’t care. After all, he’s the one that made Sam run into it… and so this burden is his to shoulder.

Castiel reaches into his jacket and pulls his angel blade from its inner pocket. Feels the weight of it in his hands, the way the cold metal presses solid against the warm flesh of his palms. He knows that when he steps beyond this border, he will no longer be safe. (He scoffs at the word _safe_ , because he was inside the border when he was attacked by a bear, and that was not very safe.)

The tips of his toes mingle on the edge. He takes deep breaths and holds his angel blade, gripping it tightly until his knuckles pale like stars.

Finally, he wills himself to step forward.

His body is still sore and his legs still trembling when he shuffles his feet unceremoniously past the invisible line. Some part of him almost expects angels to immediately jump from the brush and kill him—but nothing happens. Nothing but a spike in his heart rate and the roar of rushing fluid in his ears. For a while he only stands there, blade still in hand, before he counts to ten (he counts by counting the names of stars that make up Aquila’s wings and tail) and eventually relaxes, shoulders slumping, taut muscles untightening.

Castiel’s arms fall to his sides. His fingernails dig into his palms as he advances. He’d wanted to help Sam. Hadn’t that been the whole point of coming along? But all he’d done was make things worse.

Typical Castiel fashion.

The spots of blood continue on for quite a while, forging a path so clear and deliberate that he knows that this just has to be a plant. His belly roils at the thought of Sam being forced to bleed just for the sake of some ruse. He wishes he could bottle each droplet up and carry it back to Sam, and give back Sam the blood that has always belonged in his veins (pure, untainted, unsullied, wholly _Sam_ )—but that wish is just a wish, and once the blood’s been spilt, it cannot be unspilt.

The trees begin thinning out, and eventually become so sparse that grass overtakes soil and moss. The light gilds the edges of the blades with pale gold, and under the morning sun it almost looks as though he stands in a sea of shallow pearls, dewdrops shining and glinting amidst the fog.

One of his feet is still off the ground when the tip of something sharp presses against the curve of his spine. He stops, freezing, right hand still tightly wound about the handle of his angel blade.

“Who are you?” he asks to the ether, and the ether breathes warm onto the nape of his neck.

“You and Sam Winchester have been looking for me,” the voice replies, and Castiel feels his entire body tensing.

“Gadreel,” he rumbles, the word so light he fears the wind will carry it away. His hands tremble and he damns them for it. Were he still an angel he could consciously shut down all such reactions, but in his current state he can’t control anything—not the shake of his hands nor the tremor in his voice, nor the pain that courses dully through his joints.

“I assure you, brother: you are mistaken about me,” says Gadreel. He uses his vessel’s voice loudly and with a distinctness that sounds almost anxious. “Let me explain myself to you, and—”

“What is there to explain?” Castiel demands, voice as biting as it can be without the ability to intone his celestial authority. “You have a knife at my back. I don’t think I’m mistaken about you.”

To his surprise, however, the pressure behind him thereafter alleviates. Castiel turns his head first, then swivels the rest of his body to face his attacker squarely. His gaze locks with the human before him, and he inhales sharply, realizing that he won’t be able to see Gadreel’s true face—and so he must take this angel’s identity at vessel value.

Gadreel raises his hands in a show of peace. His angel blade is still held loosely in his fingers. “I promise you, I will not be the one to strike first.”

“You think your promises mean anything to me?” Castiel bites back. “When you were the one who let the Serpent into Eden? Your oaths are meaningless.”

A flicker of lightning passes through Gadreel’s eyes. “You misunderstand me,” he murmurs. The sea of his wrath broils beneath a layer of shallow patience, and Castiel doesn’t know if his next step will crack it or not. “Just as you misunderstand Metatron. I am here to convince you that we do not have to be enemies.”

“No. _You_ are the one that does not understand.” Castiel twirls his angel blade between his fingers, holding it in a tense reverse grip. “I was once like you—desperate to be redeemed in the eyes of our brethren, willing to cling to anything if it meant the restoration of my honor. Metatron knew that about me, and he took advantage of it. Just as he is taking advantage of you. Metatron is a liar, Gadreel. He doesn’t care about the welfare of Heaven. Can’t you see? He’s the one that caused us all to fall.”

“And that action led to my freedom,” Gadreel replies, circling around Castiel.

“Don’t be selfish. You cannot possibly put the singularity of your freedom before the order of Heaven.” The words echo the same lecture he gave to Sam not long ago so closely ( _‘How small-minded are you, that you would put your little joys above the good of the world?’_ ) that he has to fight down the urge to cringe at his own speech. Gadreel, however, doesn’t notice the subtleties of these human expressions and carries on: the thought is so humbling in its familiarity that Castiel’s gaze flits away from the visage that reminds him all too much of himself. “Listen to me, Gadreel.” He focuses his stare back onto the angel after only a second of solace. “Metatron is using you.”

“Even if he were, he does so for the sake of all our brothers and sisters.”

“Metatron is doing this so that our brothers and sisters will worship him as they once did our Father! What other reason could there be for him causing both their fall _and_ their rise? He wants to be their _God_.”

“It is because our Father is absent that we need someone like him,” Gadreel snaps back, planting his vessel’s feet firmly into the ground. “We need a new shepherd to guide us onto the righteous path.”

“No,” says Castiel softly, and the change in volume catches Gadreel’s eyes. “Because we are not sheep. We don’t need a shepherd, and we certainly don’t need _him_   to be our shepherd. I want you to make the right choice here, Gadreel. I want you to make the choice that _you_ see is just.”

“The last time I made such a choice, Lucifer was let into the Garden. You said so yourself.”

“That was the you in the past, wasn’t it? You said I misunderstood you—or perhaps I was right about you all along. Is your own sense of justice so skewed?”

Gadreel’s mouth opens and then closes, his vessel trying, in desperation, to emulate the thousand movements of his true form. Then he shakes his head, his brows knitting together. “…Even if your words were true… even if—” He cuts his words short, and casts his eyes skyward, seeking guidance from a God that isn’t there anymore. “…What would you have me do? A liar Metatron may be—but even still, I will not be an accomplice in his murder. I will not go back on my word anymore.”

“Help me,” Castiel whispers, and Gadreel looks him in the eye.

“You must understand, brother. There are some things I will not do.”

“I need only one thing from you,” says Castiel. His eyes harden. “Metatron took my grace. I need it back.”

-

“Metatron had it hidden in such a fashion that neither he nor I would be able to identify its precise location,” Gadreel explains as he and Castiel approach the library. Beyond the stone towers, the sun sinks beneath the horizon of hills and buildings, casting the sky in the colors of autumn leaves, red and orange with fingers of gold retracting behind the pale and pinked clouds.

Gadreel jams his blade into the lock and forces the doors open. “This is as far as I will help you,” he says. “After this, brother, you are on your own.”

Castiel eyes Gadreel and draws breath into his lungs. This could very well be a trap, he realizes, but… “Very well. Thank you for your help.”

Gadreel nods. Castiel steps past him and enters the library. At this hour, the library is devoid of all patrons, and the expansive room is lit only by the warm glows of strategically placed desk lamps.

He fishes from his pocket a neatly folded piece of paper and unravels it with his fingers. _Breakfast of Champions. Kurt Vonnegut_. His eyes then dart upwards as he scours the aisle labels for the appropriate bookshelf.

Finally, he spots a plastic-wrapped volume with an obnoxious yellow cover and blaring text with the title written down its spine. He puts his finger on the top of the novel and pulls it off the shelf, letting it slip into his hands. As he flips through the pages, a scrap of white catches his eye. Scrawled in fervent handwriting on the note is a single line of text.

_What’s the maddest thing a man can do?_

-

The riddle proves more challenging than Castiel expected—but perhaps that may be because he has no idea what any of these books are, let alone the answer to the riddle itself.

He’s lost track of how many human hours he’s spent here. The shadows have already finished their growing; now they consume the entire chamber in darkness, save the pockets of light left illuminated by the lamps. He’s flipped through pages of novel after novel, looking for phrases that resemble his answer—to no avail.

There’s a papercut on the tip of his left index finger, and it stings.

But he can’t give up. The hum of his grace is _near_ , and he can feel it: its power, its electricity, its desire to be reunited with its other half—with _him_. He’s so _close_ —and this has come to be about more than just his grace. This is now about Sam Winchester.

 _Sam Winchester_.

The name brings a memory to mind, and it occurs to Castiel that, once again, Sam is more helpful than he has ever been given credit for.

Sam Winchester taught him how to search the Web.

Without another second of hesitation Castiel positions himself in front of one of the computers in the library. The screen is black, and for an infuriating moment he wishes he could just slide in a spark to jolt it into awakening, but he has no such powers now. Instead he grabs the mouse and rattles it aggressively, and somehow that seems to work; the computer wheezes into life as the fan begins spinning and the screen flicks on, casting his face with a pale glow.

The computer here has a vastly different interface than Sam’s laptop, and for several breaths Castiel just stands there and stares at the monitor, trying to process what it is that he’s looking at. Colorful icons line the left side of the screen, and the image displayed as the background has some rules about library computer use policies.

He doesn’t read them because he can’t afford to care. Instead he double clicks on the blue _e_ icon titled ‘ _Internet Explorer_ ’, because it sounds like it explores the Internet, which is fundamentally what he is looking to do here. An hourglass appears next to the white arrow pointer, and then a window spawns, expanding to take over the full breadth of the screen. The Explorer opens to a digital catalogue for the library. Castiel stows the address for it into his memory; it will be useful later, he thinks. He then clicks the address bar located at the top, and diligently types in the address that Sam showed him how to use.

‘Search the Web’ then appears on the screen. He clicks into the little white box and his fingers then hesitate over the keys. What, exactly, should he type? Sam told him that he could use this website to search the archives of the public Internet. He could search about the weather, for instance, or for the news. But a riddle?

…Well, why not? At this point, the only thing he has left to lose is time (and Sam’s life— _but don’t think about that, Castiel; you will not let that happen_ ).

‘ _maddest thing a man can do_ ’

A second of waiting—then, results. Titles of webpages cascade down the window. He clicks on the first one and his eyes scan across the words, black against the white of the page. “ _Quote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra: ‘Take my advice and live for a long, long time. Because the maddest thing a man can do in this life is to let himself die.’_ ”

 _Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. Don Quixote_.

His hands are shaking as he navigates his way back to the library catalogue and types the title into the search bar. It spits out a code at him, and he practically throws himself away from the computer back into the shelves, scouring the labels for _C_ — _CE_ — _CER_ —!

There’s only one copy, and he scrambles for it, fingers prying the pages open to see the paper carved out, empty space filled with the blue glow of a thin vial. His fingers tremble violently as he cradles the vial in his palms, gazing at the wisp of ethereal blue-white curling inside the glass.

When he opens this, there will be no going back. He will be an angel again: cold, powerful, blazing with the heat of a million golden stars. There will be no more pain. There will be no more sleeping next to Sam’s warm body, no more waking to the smell of vegetable soup, no more dirty laundry or SpaghettiOs or any of the intimacy with which he experienced all things human. Where there was once fire there will only be light.

The image of Sam, bleeding, stings his mind like a dagger, and with the shut of his eyes he cracks the vial open on the floor.

Castiel breathes, and his grace is inspired into his human flesh, healing wounds and mending brokenness wherever it goes. He jolts, falling back against the wall as a supernova bursts inside of him, shock waves of heat exploding through his body—his _vessel_. His true form is unfolding; it unravels, myriad wings spreading outward until their tips scrape the sky, hands and eyes fluttering open like an iris blossoming. Photons vibrate and become waves, nesting his faces in rays of flickering ultraviolet. He extends his fingers and flexes them; bookshelves topple and chairs shatter into splinters from just the nudges of his body. The colors come back to him. Red beyond red, violet beyond violet. His heads tilt, and the whispers of mice and microbes become known to him; he hears the scuttle of a cockroach across the library floor. He breathes, and his whole form swells, glowing and shimmering. Reborn.

A storm of feathers flurry around him, littering the ground as droplets of rain. Slowly, he rises, and nudges his vessel to stand on its feet.

His grace stirs the heavens, and thunder rumbles above. In the dimness cast by the broken lanterns, the shadows of his wings extend and spread across the entire wall, grand and black and whole.

He is an angel again, and it is time he does what angels do.

He will save Sam Winchester.


	5. confluens.

_Keep me as the apple of the eye,_   
_Hide me in the shadow of Thy wings,_   
_From the wicked that oppress,_   
_My deadly enemies, that compass me about._   
Psalms 17:8-9

-

Sam wakes to the sound of rhythmic clacking and shuffling papers. His eyelids push upwards against the heavy weight of his tiredness, and bleary images fill his vision: a velvet room, carpeted in crimson and draped with colored cloths. Dim lamps illuminate the chamber in a warm amber glow, and a fireplace embedded in the opposite wall crackles with the hisses of dying cinders.

He goes to brush the hair from his face, but his hand jerks against its position—he glances down to see his wrists tied to the back of the chair he’s bound to. He grunts, struggling more despite knowing it’s futile, and doesn’t stop until he hears a nasally voice grate against his eardrums.

“Surely you know that’s just going to give you wrist burn and nothing else.”

Sam’s head snaps up to see a stocky figure sitting behind the desk. Metatron’s fingers are still resting next to the typewriter, from which several sheets roll out and spill over the table’s lacquered surface. The angel shoots him a crooked smile before pushing his chair back from the desk and standing up, revealing the obnoxious satin robe adorning his vessel.

“Well,” says Sam, features tightening, “you got me.”

Metatron skirts the desk to perch himself on the front edge. “You know why you’re here, don’t you?”

“You think having me is going to get Castiel to come to you.”

“Well—yes and no,” Metatron replies, canting his head to the sides in a quirky manner that would be endearing if anyone else did it. “I don’t think so, I _know_ so—and it’s present tense, not future. He’s coming right now.”

Sam opens his mouth, his pre-rehearsed response ready to be uttered when it occurs to him what Metatron actually said. “Wait, what?” His brows wind together and he takes a moment to inhale before looking down, eyes still wide as the information processes slowly through his tired mind.

_Castiel is coming for him?_

“I’ll let that germinate in that mop head of yours for a bit.” Metatron slides off the desk and strides over to the door, exiting Sam’s field of vision. “Sweet dreams, Mr Winchester. Put on a good show when Asstiel gets here, will you?”

Sam keeps his head forward, his unfocused gaze cast on the reflective surface of the desk before him. His eyes narrow, and he sees the scrapes and bruises on his face, the way his brows are wound together in anguish and concern and sadness. The door clicks shut behind him, and then he closes his eyes, clenching his jaws in an attempt to hold back his frustration.

Of course he wants to be saved. Of course he wants to escape from Metatron. But if it means Cas dies? If it means Cas has to suffer for him to go free? That’s not an even trade.

Not for the first time, he curses Cas for caring. For caring so much about _him_.

-

Already his human life seems as transient as a dream, and Castiel’s limbs settle naturally again into the patterns of angelic movement: on the beating of his wings and the rotations of his heads and the flexing of his wrists as he pushes his vessel forward, soaring through the ether like a runaway star.

Tendrils of his grace extend, reaching for the essence of Sam’s soul. When he finds it, he grips it tightly, and lets the gravity of its luminescence pull him closer, just as a light draws in the moths.

When his vessel’s feet find solid ground again, he is in the polished white halls of Heaven. His angel blade slides out from his sleeve and his fingers wrap around it firm.

He does not want to fight, but for Sam, he will.

As he stalks down the corridor, two of his brothers come into view. He knows their names right away; they fought alongside one another, once. Together they had harrowed hell to raise up the Righteous Man’s soul. But now here they stand: three angels on opposite sides, one draped in the flag of Heaven and the other two in the grace of Metatron.

“Move aside,” says Castiel. “I don’t want to hurt you. I just want the Winchester.”

“Metatron knew you were coming,” responds Temeluchus. “He’s ordered us all to stop you from getting to him.”

“Brother, put down your sword,” says Hesediel. “There is still time for you to join us. Not all of us here wish you ill. I, and many others, would be honored to continue to serve with you. But please, give up on the human. Drop your blade, and Metatron will accept you. He has a seat reserved for you, brother; all you need to do is bend your knee to him, and proclaim him as the one true God.”

Castiel shakes his head slowly. “No, sister. How many times must we make the same mistakes? Metatron is—”

“So what?” Hesediel replies, stepping forward,  the eyes of her vessel shining under Heaven’s white lights. “When we were lost and had nothing, he gave us back our home. He’s united us again, and we have _purpose_ again. What does it matter if he is using us? Heaven was using us long before; it always has. Whether the name of our God is Metatron or Michael, it doesn’t matter so long as we are _together_. Don’t you agree?”

Castiel’s lips press against one another. He lowers his head and palms his angel blade, noting the cold of it against the warmth of his vessel—noting how distant that sensation feels, now that it’s perceived through layers of holy grace. His brethren await a response that will never come: instead, he lunges forward, his blade flashing white as it drives into the flesh of Temeluchus’s vessel. His brother screams beneath him, his grace bursting from his body, and Castiel can feel his very own molecules shake with the tremendous force.

Hesediel is upon him next, swiping her blade at him as her angelic voice asks him _why_. He does not answer. Instead he whirls, grasping her arm as he turns, and then slams her against the wall, holding the tip of his blade against her throat.

Their eyes lock. “Why, brother?” she asks; “why?”

“I told you I just wanted Sam,” he says. “Why must we continue to bury our original mission in the blood of our brethren?”

“Heaven _is_ the original mission,” says Hesedriel, her gaze unwavering.

Castiel breathes. “Our original mission was, and always has been, humanity,” he tells her, and then he stabs her through the throat. Grace and light pour from her vessel before it sinks to the floor, empty and cold, lost eyes looking at nothing.

“We should never have forgotten that,” he says softly, and mourns his brother and sister.

-

The door bursts open, and Sam jerks his head to the side in vain; the chair is positioned in such a way that he can’t see the entrance. At first he thinks it must be Metatron, come to make some more mockery of him, but then he hesitates; from the sound of the footsteps, methodical and graceful, he’s fairly sure it’s someone else—though half of him wishes it weren’t so.

His heart feels so tight that it’s as though his ribcage is strangling his own chest. “Castiel,” he breathes, closing his eyes. “I didn’t think you’d come,” he says, and then he corrects himself. “You shouldn’t have come.”

“I will always come for you,” replies Castiel, and then he sweeps into view. Almost instantly Sam is shocked by the radiance of the other’s presence. He’d grown so used to Cas the human that he’d forgotten the electric wonder of Castiel _the angel_ , the being of light and Heaven wrapped in the flesh of man, whose eyes glinted like ice and whose breath was tinged with static and ozone. Because that is so clearly the one who is before him now, his shoulders square, his body almost glowing as if lit by the shine of an invisible halo.

Wait.

The angel?

“Your grace—” Sam begins, but Castiel hushes him, leaning in closer. Sam stutters into silence as Cas reaches behind the chair to burn through the ropes.

As he goes to help Sam up, however, the door slams shut, and Sam turns to see Metatron there, looking less than pleased.

“How did you get your grace back?” Castiel opens his mouth to give an answer, but then Metatron just shakes his head. “You know what? No—nevermind, don’t answer that. I guess there must be a tattler in my ranks. Not that I should be surprised. I know at least a good chunk of them still love you more than me, though I can’t say I know why.”

Castiel loses his patience for Metatron’s rambling sooner than usual, and his angel blade is out after the first two sentences. He herds Sam to stand behind him, the smaller frame of his vessel as Sam’s lone guard.

Metatron stops, his eyes falling onto the point of the blade. For a few seconds, it seems as though he might actually be intimidated— …but then he bursts into laughter, his whole form racked with huffs of sarcastic joy as Sam and Cas look on in vague confusion. He shakes his head slowly, wiping sarcastic tears from his eyes after he recovers from his cackling. “And what do you think that toothpick is going to do against me? I have the _Word of God_ on my side.” He smiles, and it is ugly and twisted on the face of his vessel. “You can’t kill me, even _with_ your grace.”

Sam looks to Castiel, waiting for signs of surrender, but the angel does not give any. Instead the angel blade twirls between his fingers, and he says, “Move.”

Metatron sighs, his shoulders curling in mock defeat. “It’s really a shame that I like you, Asstiel, since you seem to be so intent on dying.” He responds by taking out an angel blade of his own, gripping it lazily in his stubby hand. “But you’ve been quite the wildcard lately, and it’s time I put you down.”

If Castiel is afraid, he does not show it. Instead he advances, his strides as precise and powerful as Sam always remembers them being, as if walls and floors could crumble from just his footsteps. The two angels circle the chair in the center of the room, and the very air seems to swell and buzz with power.

Then, then—in just a second’s fraction, the space between them shatters, and it’s Castiel who’s led the charge. His blade flashes—a bolt of silver—and the edges snap against one another, sparks of white spraying like rain. But Metatron is stronger, and he flexes his wrist, twisting away before he lunges, blade piercing the air like a descending fang, and the inevitability of the bite makes Sam choke on his own throat.

Castiel swerves to the side, and the tip slices open the front of his shirt. Metatron hesitates. Hints of blood and scarring peek out from the gash in Castiel’s clothing, and he has only a breath’s duration to realize what he’s looking at.

A banishing sigil.

“You—” he starts, features twisting into a rage, but whatever threats he had devised are never spoken. Instead his form is consumed in the glare of white light, and when it fades, the Scribe is gone.

The fireplace crackles, but no other noise is made. From this angle, Sam can only see the back of Castiel’s head, and he doesn’t know who should speak first. The angel turns to Sam, his expression controlled in a way it couldn’t be before, his lips forming a line, brows creased in a look of vague concentration. But then the front collapses, and the look on his face—he could almost be _human_ again—he comes forward, uttering, “ _Sam_ ,” the name on his lips soft and reverent, and Sam stumbles towards him, their forms tangling in a tired unity.

“I’m sorry I took so long,” he says.

“You didn’t,” Sam says. “I’m sorry I ran off like that.”

“It was not your fault,” Castiel says.

“I was worried he would kill you,” Sam says.

“He didn’t,” Castiel says, and that’s enough for now.

-

The return to the cottage is bittersweet, Sam thinks; his laundry is still hanging up on the strings, and Cas’s too, though the clothing is no longer of any use to the angel. A couple cans of SpaghettiOs remain tucked inside the pantry, and the blankets on the bed are in disarray, for neither of them really cared much about straightening out the sheets each morning.

Sam packs away his things silently while the angel waits outside, standing sentry like a gargoyle. The owner of the cabin will be pretty pleased to see everything’s surprisingly left in good order, but if they bother to look more closely they might wonder at the sigils carved into the walls and bark of the surrounding trees.

Sam isn’t sure what he expected. Maybe some ugly, jealous part of him never wanted Castiel to get back his grace. Because while Cas the human had felt attainable, Castiel the angel never will be. Wrapped in celestial grace, in the cold radiance of justice, he always keeps floating just barely out of reach, their fingertips touching but never truly together.

When Sam shuffles outside, the angel is waiting for him at the bottom of the steps, eyes upturned in a sincere expression. The tenderness surprises him; usually it’s for Dean that such a gaze would be reserved for, not him. Not Sam. He should be used to it by now, he reminds himself, but even after all these days every time it feels like a mistake.

“Well,” says Sam, a smile tugging forcibly at the corners of his lips, “I guess we can take the fight to Metatron now, when we’re ready.”

“It may be appropriate to call Dean,” replies Castiel, and instantly Sam feels his heart sink like a stone.

Of course, he reminds himself. None of what happened between them… none of that matters. Maybe it did to the human Cas, but to the angel…

“Right,” says Sam, his voice dry. He ducks his head and goes to put his things into the trunk. As he walks past the angel, however, Castiel reaches out, and places a hand on Sam’s shoulder. He stops and turns, blinking, and instinctively braces himself for the worst.

“Sam.” Castiel’s voice is grave; his stare unfaltering. “I wanted to apologize to you.”

“….What?” He drops his bag, and angles his body all the way to face Cas squarely. “Uh, okay. For what?”

“For the things I said,” says Castiel. His eyes are wide and clear, and for the first time Sam realizes that perhaps the reason why Cas the angel seems so similar to Cas the human is because this is what he was all along. Maybe even as a human, he really was still an angel, he was still the same Cas, and he still loved humanity. And all those moments where they seemed indistinguishable, where they seemed the same… maybe Sam shouldn’t have separated them in his mind as if they were two separate beings in the first place. Perhaps the person before him now is no different from the person that was there before.

The only thing that’s changed is the gap between them.

“You mean earlier, back in the cabin?” Sam shakes his head, his hair rustling around his head softly. “It’s okay, man. Don’t worry about it. You were right.”

“No,” Castiel replies firmly. “I was not.” And then he takes Sam’s hand.

Sam’s heart, which was previously sitting in the bottom of his stomach, makes a sudden leap into his throat.

“The times we spent together… they were not meaningless,” Cas continues, and he pronounces each word so carefully that Sam wonders if he’s rehearsed this before, if he’s practiced saying this over and over in his mind just to make sure every syllable is right. “I will never forget our days together, Sam. I will never forget waking in the morning to see you there. I will never forget SpaghettiOs, or laundry, or poison ivy, or vegetable soup. I will never forget the sensation of sleep, next to you, thanks to you. I will never forget this cabin or the moments we shared or anything that you and I did for one another. I will never forget _you_ , Sam Winchester.”

And for the hundredth time, Sam realizes that he should never have assumed that there was such a gap between them. He never should have tried to pin down the thoughts and nuances of this angel at all. Because if Castiel is anything, he’s unfathomable; like a galaxy, like space itself, his edges limitless, and Sam, pitiful human Sam, should never have tried to know the unknowable.

But that’s just like Sam, isn’t it? To fall in love with the stars.

What isn’t like Sam is that for once, this star loves him _back_.

“Cas,” he croaks, his voice dry, all the water leaving his lips and instead brimming at his eyes. “Cas, I…”

“I’m sorry, Sam,” says the angel, his head tilting when he sees the glossiness of tears. “I thought this would make you happy.”

“No, you…” Sam breathes in, and then he smiles. The crinkling of his eyes makes the tears fall, but it doesn’t matter anymore. Without another moment of waiting he pulls the angel into his arms, holds him close. “You did. You did make me happy.”

The angel stands stiffly in Sam’s embrace. “Sam…” he says, unmoving, unsure.

“Thanks, Cas,” Sam whispers, his face buried next to Castiel’s ear. “For saving me. For caring about me. I forgive you. And so much more.”

And then Castiel seems to unfold, his body settling, warmth escaping him as he lifts his hands and places them on Sam’s back, holding him close. And though he is smaller, though his vessel is smaller, Sam feels wrapped in this angel’s embrace. And if he closes his eyes and concentrates just enough, he might imagine the rustle of feathers. He might even imagine the feeling of something gentle and great, pressing against his body, nestling him like wings.

“I’m here now, Sam,” says Castiel, and wishes he had been earlier, wishes he had been all along. “And I always will be.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> This was quite an ordeal for me to write, and I worked up until the bitter end to complete this. I hope some of you enjoyed the ride at least as much as I did. Many times I doubted I’d be able to finish: my longest stories generally float around the 5k word mark, and even those take me weeks to write. Editing this was an even more arduous process, and even now the version you see here still isn’t quite perfect; there are many things I still wish I could have improved on.
> 
> Sastiel means a lot to me as a pairing, and is the only ship I’ve ever fallen so firmly in love with. I’d like to take this time to name some of my biggest inspirations, whose writings inspired me many steps of the way: [red_river](http://archiveofourown.org/series/60685), [Celesma](http://archiveofourown.org/series/481777), and [Fallynleaf](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6988315). Thanks so much to the three of you for sharing your works with the public.
> 
> Some notes:  
> -I know some people are likely questioning my decision to have Castiel keep his wings after getting back his grace. To begin with, it’s already a stretch that he lost them in the first place, considering he was already human when he fell to Earth. (Misha Collins himself disputed the sensibility of this writing decision.) So for the sake of this story, I chose to have him keep his wings. I hope you’ll forgive me for that.  
> -Some people will be upset that there was no kiss. I deeply apologize for that. Maybe in the future I’ll write something where they kiss, but here I didn’t feel the environment was all that appropriate.  
> -The absence of Dean in this story was a fairly conscious decision. Dean, while a great character, has a tendency to overshadow the other characters in the room due to his larger-than-life nature; subtler, softer characters like Sam and Cas perform much better when he isn’t there to triangulate their interactions.  
> -Quotes at the beginnings of each section are pulled from the JPS Tanakh 1917.
> 
> You can find me on tumblr as [qastiel](http://qastiel.tumblr.com).


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